Guide To Getting Started Producing and Selling Amateur Porn

Getting Started Producing and Selling Homemade Porn

Here you’ll find the compete guide on how to get started producing and selling your own adult videos and gallery sets. There’s a huge market for amateur porn. Customers are looking for the girl next door, instead of the mainstream pornstars, and the various clip sites make it easy to make your content available to these customers. Best of all, selling content creates a residual income, as each piece of content has the potential to earn for as long as it’s available for purchase.

How Much Do Amateur Porn Producers Make?

This is a very complicated question with a complicated answer. It’s hard to calculate the lifetime value of a single clip or gallery. That’s because each piece of content has the potential to generate sales and revenue as long as it’s available for purchase. There’s also a lot of things impacting the sale price of a piece of content, such as quality, attractiveness of performers and fetishes catered to.

As for predicting the average monthly earnings of individual producers? That’s also very complicated and varies drastically. How much content is available for purchase, attractiveness of performers, size of your customer/fan-base, how much outside promotion you’re doing and the clip stores partnered with are all criteria impacting the earning potential.

Clips Generally Go For $1 Per Minute: Keep in mind, pricing is completely up to you. How much a video can be priced on is also highly dependent upon the quality of the production. $1 per minute is an “Industry Standard” though. Keep in mind that each customer will have to pay the price before getting the content, and each clip will make that dollar amount with each sale.

Thousands Per Month Is Possible: Earnings will vary from model to model. Keep in mind the industry isn’t for everyone, and some will not earn enough to make it worth it. That being said, earning thousands per month is definitely possible. 10’s of thousands, if you’re really ambitious, put the fight effort into it and you are a good fit for the industry.

What Determines Profitability:

Quality Of Productions

The highest quality the content, the greater the earning potential. There’s a lot of things that go into creating a quality product. The better production equipment the better. Filming angles, lighting and filming location also impacts the quality of the final production. It’s also worth editing the clips after production to make the end product cleaner.

Pricing Optimization

You want to price your content to be as profitable as possible. That means maximizing the number of sales, while not selling yourself short on the selling price. How much a video can be priced at depends on the quality, and a lot of other points mentioned in this section. Most clips are priced just under a dollar per minute, and discounted for slightly larger clips. Remember that you have compete control over the pricing, however.

More Content = Bigger Earning Potential

Having more content will generally result in greater earnings. This is true for a number of reasons. First, having more content increases your visibility on the clip sites. Your content will come up in a great variety of search feeds and different pages. It also allows you to cater to different fetishes, or dominate a single one. Also, someone liking what they see and buying up multiple clips isn’t possible if you’ve got a very limited selection. In general, more content = more earnings.

Bigger Fanbase = Bigger Earning Potential

The bigger your customer base, the greater your earning potential. Your loyal fans are more likely to purchase any new content that gets released, as opposed to a complete stranger. It’s important to build up a strong following on the individual clip sites, social media sites and other networks that can be used for promotion. Make sure your loyal customers know whenever you release a new piece of content!

Attractiveness Of Performers

If you’re performing solo, this means you. If you’re performing with a partner, this means you and you’re partners. If you’re trying to go the producer / studio route, that means the talent you’re shooting. You don’t have to have a perfect body to make money producing and selling. In fact, there’s a huge market for “Big Beautiful Women” (BBW) and performers with all sorts of different body types. But attractiveness does factor into content sales and profitability.

Type Of Fetishes Catered To

Some fetishes pay more than others. Some fetishes are also less competitive and easier to dominate, although those fetishes might not be as big, meaning less money in that fetish. Keep in mind, that you should always stay within your comfort zone when deciding what fetishes to cater to. You can also choose to dominate a small selection of fetishes, or cater to a large selection of fetishes. Either route can be profitable.

Optimizing Clip Site Profile

This is something that a lot of newer models fail to do. You want to have the best profile possible on all the different clip / gallery sites. This means great profile photo, filling out your profile as complete as possible (important for search feature), making sure that any sample content, thumbnails, previews, ect. are done as great as possible. Also make sure that the titles and descriptions of your content is worded good, as this impacts how your content comes up in searches and must accurately explain what is contained within the content.

Selling On Multiple Sites

Selling across multiple sites is a great way to extend the reach of your content and result in more sales. Producing and doctoring the content is the hard and time consuming part. Uploading that content after finalized can be as simple as copy/pasting the titles, descriptions, tags, ect. across all the different clip sites you’re a part of. Different sites have different audiences. Being on more sites means you’ll tap into these different audiences, gaining you and your content more exposure.

Marketing / Promotion

The various adult marketplace sites do a lot of their own marketing which drives epic amounts of traffic to their site. This should result in naturally occurring sales for you. However, if you do your own promotion, this will greatly increase your income. This is especially true for sellers with a large customer-base and following. Promotion can be as simple as keeping a social media presence. It can also be as involved as running your own website, building up email subscriber lists, and leveraging all the other marketing channels.

Earning Additional Affiliate Commissions

There are some adult marketplace sites that have affiliate programs with deep-linking. What this means is that you can link to your store / profile with affiliate links instead of linking directly. You’ll get a commission for new customers you refer that signup and purchase tokens. If you’re already promoting your content, affiliate marketing is an easy way to get some extra earnings from it.

Selling Custom Content

Custom made videos go for way more than a pre-recorded clip. That’s because it’s made as per the specifications of the customer. Best of all custom content can be resold later, or remain 100% exclusive to the purchaser for a steep marked-up price. There’s certain networks that specialize in custom content. Custom content can also be fulfilled independently, which means that you can keep more of the money.

Here’s How To Get Started Selling Porn

What’s Required To Get Started

In order to get started, you’ll need a couple things. There’s a good chance that you have everything to get started, but might want to consider upgrading in the near future in order to increase the quality and profitability of your content.

Must Be Eighteen Or Older

You (and everyone that performs with you) must be eighteen years old or older to get started. There is no exceptions. You (and anyone you’re performing with) will have to submit government-issued photo ID for age verification. This is something that all networks are required to do to stay compliant with “2257 Compliance” – Federal age verification laws. All EU countries have similar standards, and regardless of the country the sites are located in, they all comply with those standards.

Camera

The higher quality the camera the better. This doesn’t mean that you need to be shooting with 4k Reds (although that would be awesome) but upgrading to a better camera will never hurt. There are plenty of sellers producing content using 1280 webcams. It is possible to produce content with a smart phone, although it’s very awkward and typically producers lower quality productions, especially if the screen keeps rotating around. If you only have a smart phone at disposal, might want to check out some of the phone sex services.

Canons are very popular cameras. Depending on the quality, pricing ranges from a couple hundred to a couple thousand. Remember, that you can get started filming with just about anything, but having a better camera will result in a better product and more profits. If you’re not starting with a great camera, it’s worth upgrading as soon as possible or at least putting one on your wishlist. Maybe a fan buys one for you.

Computer

You’ll need a computer for editing and uploading the content. Most modern computers (desktop or laptop) should work fine. You’ll also need internet for uploading the content. I’d highly recommend getting internet with a fast upload speed. It’ll reduce the time it takes to upload each clip or gallery. This is especially true if you’re selling on multiple sites or uploading tons of content.

Choosing A Stage Name

Before you get started with anything, you’re going to want to come up with a stage name. This is your “brand” and adult persona. It’s really difficult to “rebrand” (change your name) so you want to think long and hard about what you want to go by. This name is what will be used for all your social media accounts, profiles on the adult marketplace sites and other networks. You want it to be something catchy, sexy, memorable and most importantly, something that you like.

Suggested Additional Equipment

Here is some suggested additional equipment. A lot of this stuff you might already have as well. Anything you need can be acquired over time as the profits start ramping up.

3-Point Lighting System

A 3-point lighting system is a great investment. You can buy the lighting system, or build your own fairly inexpensively. If you’re not shooting in a place with good natural (or artificial) light, a 3-point lighting system is a must! Going from bad lighting to good lighting is the single easiest ways to increase the quality of your clips and galleries. Not having good lighting is also a very common mistake of beginner producers.

Tripod and Other Camera Accessories

There’s also various camera accessories that can make filming easier and increase the quality of the production. One of the most important accessories is a tripod. This is especially true if you are shooting solo content all by yourself. Other accessories might include improved microphones, lenses and a wide range of other accessories.

Toys

It never hurts to have a big toy chest. If you’ve already got a large collection, great. If not, it’s something that you can build up over time. It’s also a good idea to keep a wishlist and add all the toys you want as wishlist items. Adult stars often get spoiled by their fans via wishlists. This is a great way to build up your toy collection without investing a dime.

Lingerie / Cosplay / Other Outfits

Having a full closet also helps. Even if your clothes aren’t going to stay on for very long, having variety adds variety to your clips and galleries. If you’re into cosplay, that type of content can perform very well. Especially if you’re very good at cosplay. Having a wide range of costumes and other outfits allows for different type of role-playing and can help to increase the diversity of your content and target different fetishes and niches.

Clip Sites: Where You Sell Your Content

Now that we’ve got everything to produce the content, it’s time to talk about where to sell it. There’s tons of different methods for monetizing the content, and tons of different networks to facilitate it. Here’s the different options for making money off your content:

Adult Marketplace Sites

Adult marketplace sites (commonly called “Clip Sites”, but you can sell other content, too) are the best source of sales for your content. Especially for newer sellers. This is because these sites already have epic amounts of customer traffic. Simply being on these sites will get you traffic directed to your profile page and store item pages, although it is recommended to do your own promotion as well.

Selling Content On Multiple Sites

It’s important to emphasize that it’s possible to sell your content on more than one site. Selling on multiple sites gains you additional exposure, resulting in more sales. That is because all the different networks have different user-bases. Although some customers might be part of all the different clip sites, different customers are partial to specific networks. Being on multiple sites gets you in front of more customers, which will help ramp up your fanbase and will result in more sales.

Creating Your Own Pay Site

When you have enough content produced, it’s possible to create your very own paysite. There’s many advantages to this. For one, you’re giving the customers the choice between subscribing to access your content, or simply purchasing the individual clips they want. For those that subscribe, you earn a residual income off the monthly rebills.

There are even free website builders for models that makes it incredibly easy to build and run your site. No coding or web hosting is required. Simply signup for the service, get verified and configure your site. The dashboard makes it easy to customize various site elements and adding new content is a breeze. These platforms have tons of other great features, too. Like the ability to run your own affiliate program, promotional tools and more.

Selling Content Independently

It’s also possible to sell your content independently. This is done using an adult-friendly payment processor (Don’t use paypal!). There are some payment processors out there that pay significantly higher percentages than the clip sites and other networks. The only catch is that you’re responsible for driving your own sales, as these payment processors don’t supply the network full of customer traffic. If you’ve got good customers, this can be an option. If you’re selling independently, it’s suggested to also partner with the networks in order to take advantage of that traffic as well. If the network sends you sales that you might not otherwise get, it’s definitely worth selling on the sites as well.

Privacy Concerns: Protecting Your Identity

Privacy is a major concern for all adult performers. You’re going to want to make sure your real identity always remains private, as well as other sensitive information, such as where you’re from. Here’s some tips to help prevent your real identity from being exposed.

Going By A Stage Name

We went over stage names earlier in this guide, but it’s important to mention it again. You don’t want to go by your real name. You want to create a stage name. This is the name you’ll go by on all your profiles, in your content and everywhere else. Your stage name is your brand and adult persona.

Regional Blocking

Many of the networks offer regional blocking. This usually includes individual states for USA models. Regional blocking is a great way to make sure that nobody in the state you reside sees you online. Keep in mind this isn’t a perfect science. If a user travels outside of the blocked area, they’ll be able to access your profile and content. Also, if the user is using a VPN, that can be used to bypass the regional blocking. Also, regional blocking only works on the site. Social media and other sites used for promotion might not offer regional blocking.

Social Media Privacy

As mentioned above, regional blocking only helps you on the clip sites themselves. Social media and other websites don’t offer regional blocking. Also, social media sites are very viral, and your content might be shared multiple times, getting it in front of tons of different eyes. This is great for marketing, but horrible for privacy.

When it comes to social media, you’re going to have to pick and choose between publicity or privacy. You can’t really have both.

It’s also important to realize that sometimes content will get shared over social media without you being the one sharing it. This is done through sharing features on the sites themselves, from affiliates promoting the network, from the network itself and from fans who might have grabbed a photo from your profile. It’s something that naturally happens.

You can decrease your public social media exposure by making your profiles private. This is possible on networks such as Twitter or Instagram. Having a private profile restricted only to your customers and fans helps shield your content from the public eye. Savvy models also make money by selling “Social Media Adds” as store items.

Fighting Stolen / Pirated Content

Not only is pirated content a privacy concern, it’s also a profitability concern. If someone is making your videos available for free on tube sites, torrent sites, pirate sites, social media, ect. than you have no control over the regional blocking. Also, if you content is available free of charge, there’s no incentive for customers to purchase it. This also impacts the profitability.

DMCA Takedown Notices is the main way to get pirated content removed. There’s a great chance that some of the clip sites you belong to offer in-house DMCA services. This is the best route to go, as it’s going to be free to you. There’s also some companies that offer DMCA services, but it’s usually a premium service that you’ll be paying for. If you’re dealing with a major pirated content problem, it’s definitely worth while though.

You want to be careful about submitting your own DMCA takedown notices, as your real name and address will have to be included on the takedown notice. Pirates have used this to extort models before, threatening to exposure their real identity. That is why it’s always recommended to get DMCA services through the clip sites or through a 3rd party provider.

Keeping A Part Time Job / Going To School

This is an offline tip. You’re going to have people in real life asking you what you do for a living. If porn is your only job, you’ll either have to lie or come clean. It’s difficult to lie about your career, as that’s something that is easily debunked. You could say you’re unemployed, but that’s hard to play off if you’ve got income. You could say your self employed, but that leads to more questions.

By keeping a part time job, or going to school part time, you have an easy answer that’s completely verifiable. This will prevent people in your personal life from getting too suspicious about your income and employment.

Ready To Compare Adult Clip Sites?

Promoting Your Services and Building An Audience

Doing your own promotion is a great way to ramp up your customer base and get more sales. There’s tons of different ways to promote your content and services. Some, like social media, are easy to get started with. Others, like web development, might require some setup, knowledge and investment. Here’s some of the different channels that you can use to promote your services.

Building A Following On The Clip Sites

The best marketing you can do will take place directly on the clip sites. That is because these sites already have tons of customer traffic looking to purchase content. Being able to tap into the traffic that’s already there is the easiest way to get more profile views and content purchases.

Different sites have different internal marketing features as well. This includes friends/connections, messaging features and other promotional tools. It’s important to take advantage of these tools to engage with the users and potential customers.

It’s also important to know how the search and ranking functionalities work on the various sites. Making sure your profile and all the information for the content / store items is optimized for increased exposure will get you more traffic and sales. It’s also important to make sure that all the tumbnails, avatars and other preview content is quality and looks good. That will make your profile and content more clickable in the search results and feeds.

Many of the networks also regularly host competitions. Win or lose, competing in competitions is a great way to gain increased exposure on the sites. This is though the competition pages (usually showing current rankings) and other sections of the sites. In some contests, you also make money from the votes, even if you’re not a winner, meaning there’s no reason you shouldn’t be competing.

Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is easy to do and very effective. Pretty much everyone is already on Facebook, Twitter and other social networks. If you’ve used one, it’s also pretty easy to pick up any other social network, as they all behave pretty similarly. This makes the learning curve on social media marketing less steep than other marketing channels.

There’s even some adult-friendly social networks, such as Twitter and Tumblr. For the non-adult friendly networks, you can still use them, you just have to be careful. That means no posting anything nude or overly sexual. You also need to be careful about not linking to adult content. The idea is to watermark safe-for-work content with a website address or hope that users Google your stage-name and find your different networks.

Website and SEO

There’s a lot of advantages of running your own website. Running your own website has also never been easier. In fact, there’s free website builders designed specifically for camgirls, producers and other adult stars. With these tools, it’s possible to easily build your site, 100% free. Even without knowing anything about web hosting or HTML. Simply use the visual website builder to design your site and add content.

Your website works as the main hub for all your marketing efforts. It’s a place where you can list all your networks, social media links and the services you offer. Your website can also be monetized directly. This is through selling your content and services directly from your website or charging subscriptions to access the content.

Having a website also allows you to tap into valuable search engine traffic. Once you’ve got your site ranked, you steadily benefit from a stream of “free” traffic. Search Engine Optimization (SEO), the practice of getting a site ranked in search engines is a little complex, but not that difficult. The thing about SEO is you can learn the real basic best practices, or you can dive real in-depth into it. Even just knowing the basics is enough to get your site ranked for some valuable search terms and take advantage of the traffic.

Model Directory Sites / Review Sites

There are many different model directory sites out there. These sites generally post the instructions on how to get listed in an easy to see place. If you’re running a website, there’s also tons of review sites out there.

Keep in mind that some of these sites might have requirements to get listed. This might either be a link exchanged (putting a text link or small banner on a page on your site) or running your own affiliate program. If you’re using one of the website builders designed for models, there’s a chance that there’s an affiliate program feature built into the platform.

Both of these type of sites are great traffic sources.

Tube Sites and Other Adult Networks

Tube sites have a bad reputation with a lot of producers, due to the high amount of pirating. When done right though, tube sites can be a great marketing tool and can also provide an additional revenue stream. Many tube sites will give producers (especially amateurs) a share of the ad revenue generated by the video views. The earnings are incremental, but when done right, it’s marketing that also pays. Just be sure to not give away entire scenes and watermark the content so they know where to get the full version.

Outside of tube sites, there’s also other adult-oriented networks, forums and other sites. These networks and communities are also a great avenue for promotion.

Get Featured On Blogs and In Articles

Many of the clip sites have their own blog where they regularly feature models. Getting featured in the network’s blog is a great source of publicity. Especially since all featured models are also shared through their social media, newsletters and other promotional channels. To learn how to get featured in the blog, shoot an email to the network support, and they’ll provide you with the contact information for the person at the company you need to holler at.

Make More Money With Custom Content Requests

It’s also possible to make money off custom content requests. Customs can be very profitable. The best thing of all: You can resell the customs after you produce them! It’s also a great way to build up your clip store. The item being requested is obviously something you don’t currently offer, and something your customers are interested in. Some models best-sellers are clips that were originally custom requests.

Performing Solo Vs Performing With A Partner

It’s possible to be a solo performer. If you wish, you can also perform with a partner (or multiple). There’s a couple of considerations when performing with a partner. The first being who you are going to perform with. Is it going to be your boyfriend/girlfriend? Other pornstars? Are you finding them through some other methods? Either way, there are things to consider when filming with a partner.

Age Verification / 2257 Compliance – Just like you need to submit age verification documentation to the clip sites and other networks, anyone you’re performing with will have to do the same. You’ll also want to keep these records on file yourself. Make sure you get a copy of their ID and a face shot of them holding it. Everything required for 2257 Compliance.

Testing and Sharing Results – Although it’s not technically required (like it is in mainstream porn) staying on top of testing is the best practice. This includes making sure all partners are tested, as well as getting tested yourself. Make sure to have test results available and that anyone you’re performing with has theirs available. If you’re performing with a boyfriend/girlfriend, this isn’t as big of an issue.

Rights To The Content – Who has the rights to the content? Are you paying a performer to be featured in the content, but retaining the rights? Are both the performers able to upload the content on the clip stores? Are there other terms that need to be negotiated? It’s important to plan all this and make sure to get it in printed copy

Traveling / Meeting Up – Assuming the person you’re performing with isn’t in the local area, some traveling is going to happen. One performer might go to the other’s city, or they might meet up at a hotel somewhere in between. However it works, there’s things such as travel expenses, making sure there’s enough to time collaborate and other planning that’s required.

Privacy Concerns – Make you trust the people you’re performing with! If they’ve got the rights to use the content themselves, they’ve got your personal information in the form of model releases and 2257 Documentation. For this reason, make sure that you only work with people you trust!

Offering Other Services

Amateur porn isn’t the only service you can make money offering. There’s tons of other services that are insanely simple to get started offering. Just like selling content, there’s no hiring process and anyone eighteen or older can get paid offering these services. Here are the other main services you can get paid offering.

Live Webcam Shows

Live camming is insanely popular and profitable. That is because of the interactive element, combined with the amateur element. Live interaction is something that you can’t get with pre-recorded clips, giving live camming incredible appeal! There’s tons of different camming sites where models can get paid performing. Each of these sites have different features and focuses.

Phone Sex - Talking and Texting and More!

Phone sex is one of the older forms of adult entertainment, and it’s evolved since way back in the day. Now, phone sex operators can make money from their mobile phones. The models can also be called or texted directly. You don’t sit there motioning a 1-900 number, waiting for random calls to come in. Mobile applications have also greatly impacted the phone sex industry, adding an image and video component to it.

Adult Skype Shows

Adult Skype shows is very similar to live camming, but takes place on Skype. Because it’s on Skype and not a network, models are able to keep a greater percentage. There’s also some tools out there for independent Skype models. Skype can also be voice or text only, although cam-to-cam Skype shows are the most popular and highest paying.

Selling Tangibles - Panties, Signed Photos, Toys and More!

There’s some good money in selling tangibles. This is everything from worn panties to signed photos, pussy-pops, pussy molds, letters, and much, much more. Basically anything you can think of that you can ship and sell, you can make money offering. There’s networks that specialize in tangible sales (usually worn clothing items). You can also create custom store items on many of the different networks or use a payment processor to sell these items independently.

More Resources For Porn Producers

If you’re looking for more tips and tricks for producing and selling content, you’re at the right place. This site is full of helpful information for new and experienced performers alike. Here are some other resources that are worth checking out:

How To Research Fetishes – There are so many fetishes out there. More than you’d think. Your most popular fetish might not be something that you even knew existed. Katy Churchill gives some tips on how to research fetishes and sub-fetishes.

Getting More Custom Content Requests – Custom clips or galleries go for a higher rate than pre-recorded clips. These videos can also be resold after being completed. This makes it a win/win. Aerie gives some tips on getting more custom content requests.

How To Build A Website – A website isn’t only a valuable marketing tool. It can also generate it’s own income. Building a website is easy and there’s some platforms out there designed specifically for adult performers.

Telling People That You’re In Porn – There’s a very good chance that people will find out you do porn. Whether you keep it a secret or decide to come out of the closet, eventually you’ll have to talk to people about your profession. Aerie gives some tips on how to do just that.

Promoting Your Services – Marketing is very important. Our marketing section contains tons of helpful resources and articles on how to promote your products and services.